


All the Waters in the World

by THE_EVIL_CLIFFIE



Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars Episode VII: The Force Awakens (2015)
Genre: Gen, Gen Fic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-12-24
Updated: 2015-12-24
Packaged: 2018-05-09 02:58:19
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 828
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5522876
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/THE_EVIL_CLIFFIE/pseuds/THE_EVIL_CLIFFIE
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Rey's never seen rain, or mud, or a forest, except in dreams. Their discovery is like a revelation.</p>
            </blockquote>





	All the Waters in the World

There’s just so _much_  of everything on this world, Rey thinks, her entire being made light and buoyant by the thought. She stands barefoot, the loose earth rapidly turning to mud between her toes, cool rain sliding over her skin and soaking her hair flat to her scalp. The air smells of water and dirt and _plants_ , of the chemical tang of X-Wing fuel and flower pollen and the distant salt tang of a far-off sea.

 

She stretches her arms out, feeling water seep under her nails and drip off her outstretched fingers. A breeze blows against her, cool and wet, not dust-dry and full of grit.

 

She realises she’s grinning from ear to ear.

 

“You sure you wanna be out in this?” a voice calls from behind her. She opens her eyes and turns. Poe’s standing in the shadowed doorway to what Rey now knows is called Barracks One. All the buildings are hollowed into the ground, to withstand bombardment. The little hillocks they make are covered with grass and flowers, more life in a square metre than Rey had ever seen on Jakku.

 

“I’ve never been rained on,” she says, still grinning. “I don’t think there was this much water on all of Jakku.”

 

“That rock was dry as a Hutt’s tears, right enough,” says Poe. “But you stay out there, you’re gonna catch your death.” There’s a little concerned warble, and BB-8 rolls out next to Poe, echoing his words in Binary.

 

Rey takes a look up at the slate-grey sky, squinting to keep the water out of her eyes. She shivers, and realises that her nose feels blocked. Something builds at the top of her throat, just at the back of her nose, and suddenly her whole body is rocked by a sneeze.

 

“See?” Poe says. Rey shakes her head trying to clear the sensation. Loose, wet hairs slap against her face.

 

“All right,” she says, turning and walking back to the doorway. She’d left her boots in the sheltered lee of the roof, with her staff. No point in getting _those_ wet. BB-8 rolls out into the wet and bumps her legs affectionately, burbling something about hot drinks.

 

The base’s corridors are well-lit, but not with the same stark brightness as Starkiller’s passages. There are actual shadows here, and the whole place feels lived-in and run-down in a way that Rey thinks the First Order would find unacceptable. General Organa’s people keep it clean but not spotless. She feels slightly guilty dripping on the concrete, but BB-8 tells her one of the cleaning droids will take care of it. They’re an odd, furtive bunch, but they seem to like Rey, especially since she spent an hour the other day taking care of faulty motivators.

 

Her room – and that’s a strange thought, a space of her own that she hasn’t had to fight for – is at the end of a corridor, one of the few with a window. The door slides aside with a whisper of sound, and she hears Poe’s intake of breath at what’s inside.

 

Parts of the space look like a machine shop, filled with odd parts that Rey’s found discarded or refitted from scrap around the base. There’s already a lot of it, considering the short time she’s been here. Most of the rest of the space is filled with plants; the air smells of fresh soil and chlorophyll. There’s a small tree in a big pot in the corner, a Gajjara (apparently, according to BB-8) that’s already head-high and bearing small yellow fruit. Planters filled with greens, flowers, vegetables, cover the walls and floors. Rey navigates between them, her fingers trailing over leaves and stems and blooms.

 

“Wow,” Poe says, clearly shocked. “I guess you don’t get that many plants on Jakku.”

 

“I had one,” Rey says, sitting on the moulded plasteel chair in the corner next to the tree. “But it didn’t grow very big.” She’s surprised to find that the old ache had faded a little; Jakku was fading in her memory, and she’d stopped yearning to go back. Maz’s words had been true. Whoever had left her there wasn’t coming back, and there was a kind of home here too.

 

“Go take a shower,” says Poe. “Put some dry clothes on.”

 

And that’s another thing; clothes just sort of _happen_ here, issued from some central store. She still has her clothes from Jakku, but they’re at the bottom of a pile in her wardrobe, because there are so many new things to wear she can’t bear to go back to those just yet.

 

The door closes, BB-8 giving a farewell warble and promising to come back with a hot drink. Rey realises she’s smiling, here in her warm room in a Resistance base, surrounded by more green than she’d ever thought possible. She trails her fingertips over the Gajjara’s bark, then gets up and goes towards her shower, and more water than she’d ever dreamed of.


End file.
